Every Friday I, unfortunately, have a class with only two students in. They are two 1st graders.
They can speak very little English and working through the day's lesson takes 15mins leaving me with 30mins of creative trickery to get them to continue learning the work without resulting in absolute rebellion - which happens if they realise that they are still doing classwork. (I don't blame them).

The most recent class I had with them, I had them name and colour in the animal cards in their books.
Julia, the other student in the class, and Chris are two very different children. Julia finds great pleasure in hugging my arm or stroking it, and Chris, Chris likes to karate kick the door closed and roar.

When it came to colouring in their pictures, Julia checked her colours with the colour printed versions on the previous page, making absolutely sure that hers matched up and Chris coloured the rabbit in rainbow stripes, the deer blue, the chicken black, the cat green and his tortoise had one red leg.

Then Julia picked two shades of green to colour her tortoise.. she starts to use the lighter shade and things are going well until Chris spots her choice of colour. Without a thought of his own colour choices he tells Julia off - She is using the incorrect shade of green!

To be honest, I admire Chris' freedom.
After we coloured in the animal cards, we had some free time. With his black crayon he scribbled a chicken looking shape and then added some legs. I added a beak, 'feet' and the comb. Then Chris coloured the open spaces with red and wrote a bunch of chicken related things in Korean. He left me with the image and now it's mine.

Some of the more common gems found around the world are the little green diamonds dug out of the depths of a 1st grader's nose. With two fingers. One for each nostril

The kind of gems I much prefer are ones my 2nd -6th graders dig out. Little English gems. As young English learners, living in a world that is very much NOT English, they rely on their limited language knowledge and vocabulary to converse with me and answer my questions. This often results in such creative expressions, funny comments and ingenious alternatives to what us boring English speakers use to convey our thoughts.

The very first time that I remember being absolutely delighted by a little gem was when Phillip, a loud 6th grader, who recently sized me up and discovering he was taller than me did a little joyous jig, described a far away country.
Sky country.
What he was really talking about was heaven.
I imagine that his thought process went something like this: 1. A place where people go live(?) when they die. 2. Where do people live? In countries. 3. Where is this country? In the sky. 1+1 = sky country

Here are a few of the gems I have collected thus far, by which I mean, I have actually written down and not lost the page on which I've written it down on.

On body parts:
Shawn, one of my more favoured students from a definitely favoured class, told me a little story about an accident that happened to his - at this point he did the looking for the English word dance..-
he gave up, "feet fingers!"
And what are toes, if they aren't fingers for the feet, or if fingers is the word you struggle with, hand toes?

Jeff: Teacher! He hit me on my legs, in-between! (groin)

On popular culture:
Sophie: "I like Batman because he kills people. It's very good"

On public transport etiquette:
Unknown: When you sleep on the subway you must not borrow another person's shoulder

On deepest fears:
Me: What are you most afraid of?
Sophie: Very fat and tall people. (she is afraid she can't see past them and lose her parents in a crowd)
Victoria: Poop
Unknown: I'm afraid of bugs! But not computer bugs.

Me: "How are you Tommy?"
Tommy: "I'm happy! because tomorrow day, girlfriend! Date!"
Me: "Oh really? Where will you go for your date? What will you do?"
Tommy: "I have no idea."

On cities:
Alex: Cities are ugly! Because so many cars march in order. It (they) look like bugs!

And that's all for today.
I know it's short and I have been here over a year, but better late than never, (which I really hope I can apply to my derailed design career, post teaching abroad), I shall continue to collect and hoard these little gems and share them with you.